Who says "Sky is the limit"

We have been using adage “Sky is the limit” many times But looking at the current prices of vegetables or food basket this adage needs an amendment to “heaven is the limit” as the prices of staple food items dosen;t seems to be coming down in the very immediate future. Prices of staple items like potatoes, onions and pulses are sky rocketing as a result the food inflation rose to 14.55 per cent in the first week of November. On a weekly basis, inflation rose 0.87 percentage points from 13.68 per cent.

If we have an yearly comparison of the commodities prices of potatoes shot up by 102.47 per cent, onions by 38.24 per cent and pulses by 27.03 per cent. Experts feel that prices of food items will continue to remain at an elevated level unless there is a bumper rabi crop.
There is virtually nothing from the food basked that is showing a declining trend in terms of pricing on a yearly basis.

Rice appreciated by 11.65 per cent, wheat by 12.60 per cent and milk by 11.29 per cent. However, on the weekly basis, poultry chicken and fruits & vegetables became cheaper by one per cent each. Some analyst believes that the inflation is because of bad monsoon earlier and things will not improve till a bumper rabi crop is harvested. (Refer How Monsoon can affect my country)

With price of commodities rising with each passing day the household budgets are getting crashed and common people are forced to compromise on many things to maintain there budget within there limits. Fruits, green vegetables and pulses are a passé for poor people, If my brothers and sisters don’t eat a proper diet, how my country will grow? Because growth of a country also depend on healthy workforce. This is a big question for which we should seek a solution.

Image source: fruitsandvegetables.org.uk

Learning Organization

According to Peter Senge the learning organization can be defined as “Organization with an ingrained philosophy for anticipating, reacting and responding to change, complexity and uncertainty.”

Learning organization learns and encourages learning among its employees. Organization promotes exchange of information between employees and hence creates a more knowledgeable workforce


Culture of learning organization and there beliefs

1. There is a Stress on continual learning.
2. Every one can be a source of ideas, so people are given access to any information that can be of value to them.
3. People closest to the problem have the best ideas to solve it, so empowerment is there.
4. Learning flows up and down the hierarchy.
5. New ideas are encouraged and celebrated.
6. Mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities.
7. Organization show Holistic approach to the problem statement.
8. Organizations show Willingness to accept failure.
9. They develop a sense of personal efficacy.
10. They Develop creativity, personal flexibility and willingness to take risks.

Triple bottom line

The triple bottom line abbreviated as "TBL" or "3BL", and also known as "people, planet, profit". Triple bottom line accounting means expanding the traditional reporting framework to take into account ecological and social performance in addition to financial performance. A commitment to corporate social responsibility implies a commitment to some form of TBL reporting.


“People” Component means fair and beneficial business practices toward labour ,community and region in which the organization conducts its business.

“Planet” this component implies that the organization is reducing its ecological footprint by carefully managing its consumption of energy, reducing manufacturing waste and emitting less toxic waste.

“Profit" As we know and understand is the economic value created by the organization after deducting the cost of all inputs from its revenue

Image source: novonordisk.com

Gold Gold & Gold

All those who have invested in gold are delighted and counting there profits with every passing day (with gold touching new highs every day) but the sad part is for the thousands of people who are into jewelry making business. With gold touching it all time high, the demand of jewellery has drastically fallen giving a tougher time to the Artisans who were earlier employed with the jewelry shops are now at the mercy of market realties

With each rising day the loyalty of gold lovers is getting tilted to pure gold bars as compared to ornaments & jewellery, artisans believe that this is a temporary phase and people will come back to what they like the most (jewelleries) as soon as the prices get stabilized.

But there are no concrete reasons of gold pricing hitting back to price of (10000- 12000 per 10 gms) instead a price of 20000 per 10 gms seems to have concrete reasons.

China is emerging as super power in Gold, it have gold reserves of 1054 tonnes as on April, 2009, 1200 odd mines and still striving to increase the production. This move might be to safeguard itself from $ fluctuation and for diversification of the reserves.

Recently India's central bank bought 200 metric tons of gold from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last month. This is again a move to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves.

With two major consumer countries (known to me) opting for God to diversify there foreign exchange reserves I believe more countries will join this rally and demand for gold will be there, so the question of price coming down is ruled out.

Apart from this India is an importer of gold, whatever we produce is not sufficient to fulfill our demand, so gold import will be there and will provide more support to high price of gold.

image source: http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/

Will it shine more?

Right from the investors to traders everyone seems to be happy with the recent spurt in the prices of gold. Analyst are predicting the prices to shoot up to 2000 $ per ounce but even there are predictions of the precious metal touching 800 $ per ounce.

The argument for the 2000$ price tag being that the US economy require further stimulus packages, which will weaken the dollar and the current rally in gold is because of dollar getting weaken.

The argument for 800$ price tag being that the U.S. economy is emerging from the recession and the gold prices are rising without any fundamental factors so it is bound to come down.

But as of now the gold prices are high as investors are option the precious metal instead of currency market.

Image source http://www.crestock.com/

Networking sites

People get introduced to each other; know each other liking/disliking, hobbies, aspirations and interest and finally agreed to each other as partners.

You will ask what’s new about that. This is what generally happens before one prepares himself/ herself for any sort of partnership.

Well the new thing here is the platform through which people are getting introduced, yup you guess right I’m talking about the internet as a medium and networking sites as platform.

This is not a new buzz I’m sharing with you; even you might have some real examples in your friend’s circle of marriages and relationship happening over internet.

But the latest buzz is the euphoria created about the networking sites, I’ll not name the site but the fact is that everyone (corporate, individuals) are hooked for creating there profiles on such networking sites. I do not know the utility of creating buzz and making people follow you, but the fact is that the concept is getting accepted by people now a day.

The current offerings of social networks are imitations of things that are already available on the Internet, newsgroup, searches, chat, search colleague, friend, batch mates etc. I would like to share a survey report published on stockwatch.in. "Net working sites are the best way to reach out to friends and family, but such sites are costing the British businesses a loss of almost 1.38 billion pounds a year"

According to the survey, almost 50 per cent of the office staff is actively using these social networking sites for personal use during the office hours, which results in a waste of 40 minutes in one week. The IT services company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.

I would also like to share An interesting fact with you; There are a lot of networking sites originated from India but none of them became so popular as compared to there western counterpart, may be they know how to Position there product, create branding of there product, how to pack it and how to hook people to use it.

Happy Networking......

Image source gtashuttleservices.com

Commonality between companies and individuals.

When i was publishing my previous article on How to retain talent I observed something; that commonality exists between the individuals and the corporate thought process, the way they think for a solution and the way they address a given situation.

To compliment this I will elaborate some examples Remember the Global economic crises. What did the big/small corporate did? All of them went for a head reductions without worrying about there future goals/launches, about there market share, competitors moves, strategic positioning of theirs vis-à-vis there competitors.

Companies started reverse engineering for cost cutting. Let me explain, management gave a target to departments/ functions to reduce cost by say 20% now it was the department/ functions head responsibilities to reduce that many head which will help them to achieve the cost cutting target. Doesn’t it sound funny?

In most of the cases company were already having expansion plans and some of them have already invested in expanding in certain technological areas, geographical markets and operations where there performance was far below industry the industry standards. With the wave of head reduction all this expenses turned to sunk cost recovering which is next to impossible and getting back on track with all the previous plans and strategy seems to be a difficult proposition.

As per my school of though if the companies would have invested in technology, human resources, expansion they would have reaped huge benefits today and days to come. But the companies did the opposite way and to retain the status quo it will take years because in business 1 month delay is 1 year behind.

Similarly individuals too took wrong decision during the down time. Stock investors were watching there stocks falling and did nothing, when the stock prices hit the rock bottom prices they simply stayed away from market and exited there holding as soon as the stock price touched there purchase price, fearing that the price may fall any time.

If they would have invested (in the same stock which they were holding) when the stock prices were @ there bottom prices they could have attained a breakeven much before and could have made huge profits.
Most of the investors were scared and didn’t wanted to put there money in any of the risky propositions, investors were sitting on cash but were not willing to invest anywhere, all the money from stock market either moved to bank deposits or lost its value. If they would have shown courage of investing against risk they would have earned huge profits.

On the contrary there was/is no prudent way in which the downturn could have been handled, individuals/ corporates responded in there own way which they felt is the prudent way.

Ken Thompson said “Long-term success is not only determined by how well a company/individual handles a downturn, but also by its foresight in preparing for the next upturn. In the midst of a recession, we are often forced to restructure and control expenses, but those who focus only on the immediate crisis may be left behind when better times return.”

Image souce bioteams.com